| By 1877, he was facing domestic [marital?] strife and excessive debt and on 7 Jun 77, he disappeared, leading friends, family, and associates to wonder if he were dead; In 1880, his wife had resorted to turning their home into a boarding house; Meanwhile, Tuley had quietly gone out West (to Texas and New Mexico) where he took a Civil Service job for the post office; This job eventually took him to Washington, DC where he was apprehended in Sep 1884 just as his brother was attempting to get the insurance company to finally pay the family's claim for his life insurance; Amazingly, he was not convicted of any crime and was allowed to keep his post office job--in 1900, he finally assumed his real name over the alias he had used all those years (Philip Nolan, as in the antihero of Edward Everett Hale's novella, The Man Without a Country); Nathalie and their children joined him in Washington where they remained until Nathalie's death in 1911 and his death in 1921; He was active in the GAR and apparently suffered no repercussions from his escapade. |
Captain Seth Woodruff Tuley
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